Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 [Paperback]

Jose C. Moya (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520215265 | ISBN-13: 978-0520215269 | Publication Date: March 31, 1998 | Edition: 1

More than four million Spaniards came to the Western Hemisphere between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression. Unlike that of most other Europeans, their major destination was Argentina, not the United States. Studies of these immigrants--mostly laborers and peasants--have been scarce in comparison with studies of other groups of smaller size and lesser influence. Presenting original research within a broad comparative framework, Jose C. Moya fills a considerable gap in our knowledge of immigration to Argentina, one of the world's primary "settler" societies. Moya moves deftly between micro- and macro-analysis to illuminate the immigration phenomenon. A wealth of primary sources culled from dozens of immigrant associations, national and village archives, and interviews with surviving participants in Argentina and Spain inform his discussion of the origins of Spanish immigration, residence patterns, community formation, labor, and cultural cognitive aspects of the immigration process. In addition, he provides valuable material on other immigrant groups in Argentina and gives a balanced critique of major issues in migration studies.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A book that bears the hallmarks of a classic: erudite scholarship, elegant prose, and comprehensive treatment of the topic." -- Journal of Historical Geography

"An extremely impressive piece of scholarship. . . . " -- Canadian Journal of History

"Moya writes with clarity, humor, and grace. . . accessible to the least, as well as the most, methodologically sophisticated readers. . . . " -- The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This study will set the standard for all future histories of the immigration experience in Argentina. . . . A landmark work." -- History: Review of New Books

"Written in a compelling and lively manner, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued. . . sets a new standard. . . . " -- Revista de Estudios Hispanicos

From the Inside Flap

"Moya commands not only the statistical sources but the literary and folklorical ones as well, weaving them in a history that is both analytical and narrative...A superb book that will be a standard monument, not only for Spanish migration and Argentine history, but for migration history in general."

Walter Nugent, University of Notre Dame



"A major achievement, it represents a vast, comprehensive research effort on two continents, using a world-wide background literature and a stunning array of research techniques, all well integrated, on a topic of large scope and significance. The entire enterprise is watched over by an acute, curious, lively mind in notable equilibrium and equanimity, bringing the research to life, fereting out the implications of widely scattered and apparently disparate facts, and reaching many new, significant, and well founded conclusions."

James Lockhart, University of California, Los Angeles



"By far the most original on its subject, this book will become a landmark study in Latin American history."

David Rock, University of California, Santa Barbara



"The scope and depth of Moya's research are impressive...His imaginative use of sources and evidence and lively, frequently entertaining prose make this a stimulating, satisfying, and ascinating study...This is scholarship that is meticulous, well-reasoned, and highly original."

Ida Altman, University of New Orleans



"One of the truly first-rate studies in the vast migration literature--an authentic tour-de-force."

William Douglass, University of Nevada, Reno

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 586 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (March 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520215265
• ISBN-13: 978-0520215269
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #320,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Argentina

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An original, thorough, and profound book, June 19, 2001

By 

Daniel K Lewis (Pomona, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Paperback)

Please disregard the childish review filed from Miami. Historians have justly praised Moya's text as a product of broad and extensive research in Argentina and Spain. Relying on archival research, oral history, and cross-national investigations of families and communities across generations, Cousins and Strangers provides a clear explanation of the factors that shape the immigrant experience in Buenos Aires. There is no better book on the subject. It will influence and inspire future researchers who want to investigate the history of immigrant communities and cultures in the Americas for years to come.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best history book I have ever read!!, May 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Paperback)

This book is bold in conception, elegant in its execution, imaginative in its methodology. It should be read by anyone interested in the immigrant experience anywhere and in the craft of history in general. Others seem to agree with me. It has won five prestigious awards. Apparently, the taste of readers from Miami is as philistine as their politics.

5.0 out of 5 stars Out here one determines his own destiny -As John Wayne said, November 14, 2010

By 

Quilmiense (USA/Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Paperback)

Much as I was afraid of delving into this huge sociological study of Spanish immigration to Buenos Aires (1850-1930), it did not take an hour for me to realize that I had hit on a precious pearl. Granted this is not a popular history, nor is it an assay on historical issues, it is strictly hard sociology, with data, charts and the works. But my, what a talent this man has had putting all this information into a legible and even amusing text. Meant for the academia, it broke the mold and got to the general readers' shelves. Justifiably so.

Being a Spaniard myself, from this devil and witch ridden land of Galicia, with plenty of ties to our diaspora, Argentine and otherwise, I have an irresistible curiosity to understand the hows and whys of those people, generations ago, who decided to leave, who chose for the unknown rather than the comfort of one's own mediocre living, or those lacking what it took and settled with resignation. I wanted to know not only the hardships and physical adventures they chose to go through, and the kind of lives they were willing to forsake, family ties, homes, national cultures; what I wanted to find out, really, is what went on in the back of their minds, in the innermost spot of their souls that made them (them as opposed to the rest who stayed behind) leave. Migrating seems to me as the closest thing to the transmigration of one's soul. I mean this, if one has no say about the family and culture into which he is born, the whole set of circumstances, maybe migrating to a distant and foreign land has to do with it. Maybe its our way of making a statement. I understand it so. And while one part of him cannot forfeit his memories of home, and carries them like a cross to the grave, another part of his ambivalent soul longs for the new life, the one started with rebellion, like a self-made Adam.

Well, I kind of found an answer to what I wanted to know. There is history big and small, city history and citizens' histories with names and faces. Mr. Moya does not show us cold numbers, and does not spend too long in sociological jargon; here is enough to satisfy the haughty intellectual and humble reader Joe. Above all Moya the writer comes out as a friendly voice leading us through what might have been a hard road indeed. His mastery of the subject lets him speak with immense common sense, what most intellectuals would have avoided with haughty pretense. His love of the subject shines through. Here's a conclusion drawn from a clear mind: "Immigrants were not simply pawns at the mercy of impersonal forces; rather they were willful agents normally within the restraints of structures and the bonds of the past." Trying to find out why an illiterate laborer moved into a certain place in Buenos Aires instead of another place he is wise enough to understand that such person would have given us one answer -if asked: "Because my cousins lived there", for instance; but that wouldn't be the total picture: there are invisible forces that are the object of sociology that make up for the paucity of words of the respondent. And that's the sociologist's work, not the novelist's.

Close to my heart came this sentence: "the Mataronese (people from a town in Cataluña, were) the least communal of the groups and the closest thing to the liberal image of immigrants as self-reliant free spirits and individualistic trailblazers." I couldn't help being intrigued by this group, the one that indubitably suits my soul. There were many other groups that stuck to their "birth-given" clans, in more or less degree. That is, they moved to another world but carried the old with them. Instead, the Mataronese achieved the rare feat in my personal view: they were the curseless ones, the Adams prior to the curse.

In any case, it's a microcosm this book is. It helps understand people, why we are so different and make so varying choices in life. Thank God the author is not one of those Marxists who would easily explain away man's choices as the result of his social circumstances, unfair of course. No, it's not only the circumstances that make us, it's us too that are to blame or to praise. In the end one still has reason to ask, after seeing the big picture and looking into the lives and choices of so many people from different backgrounds: what made them leave, though? And what made many others never do it? Opportunely at the beginning of the book one learns that those who left were not the poorest and most illiterate, they were the most adventurous, the ones who had heard stories of far away lands and of possibilities, and whose imagination and dreams had been aroused. Go and populate the world; you shall leave your father's house... Oh boy, how low government has made us fall, we are bred like cattle now, welfare and leftist media have tamed us and nobody dares dream anymore. We are allowed only the dreams fed by our self-proclaimed scientific and politically correct crony Western governments. Only now there are no more Buenos Aires and no more Americas to go to, not as they once were anyway.